Light in the Darkness
by detective-sweetheart
Summary: ...she had been mine for the past four years, and now it was my turn to be hers.


_A/N: This is what happens when I'm sitting outside and start thinking about Bobby. And then about Alex. And then about Nicole, and that line she had for Bobby in Great Barrier as to how neither of them were 'meant to have kids' or however it was she put it. Anyways, CI's not mine. _

I dreamed, if only for a moment. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see her, and it disgusted me. Her voice lingered in the depths of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to make it go away. That lilted accent and mocking tone echoed, and wouldn't leave me alone. So instead of trying to push my way though that shaky feeling I got after every encounter we had, I opened my eyes, and I sat up.

Shadows made their way across a colorless ceiling, entertaining in their own right, but confusing. An enigma. Like the so-called "relationship" I shared with Nicole Wallace. If one could call it a relationship in the first place. Life had an unfortunate habit of leading me into the unexpected and unknown. I had learned a long while ago to deal with it, but this…This had caught me off my guard. And I didn't like it.

I had often wondered if I would ever see Nicole's limits and now highly doubted it. There was a lot more ice to Nicole than there was fire. How any mother could kill her own child…There was a lot more ice to Nicole than there was fire. I wondered as I leaned back against my headboard whether or not there would be a day when she herself finally felt that she had gone too far and doubted that as well.

I also doubted myself as well. Nicole had told me, or rather, had made the comment that neither her nor I were meant to have children. I told her not to count me out yet. But now I wondered. The shadows of my past became the ones I saw on the ceiling; myself at seven years old, and a vision of my mother, before she had fallen to her illness. The darker shadows were that of my father and older brother, and I wondered if Nicole was right, that neither she nor I would ever have the family I suspected we _both_ had so often seen in childhood dreams. I wondered which way I would go; my mother's route, or my father's, or even both.

I shuddered at the thought and tried to focus on something else, but it wouldn't go away. So I concentrated on it, as if it were a criminal whose mind I was trying to get into. Sleep wouldn't be happening anytime soon; I was determined to pick this apart until I figured out what would happen. But I didn't think I would. I was not clairvoyant and could not predict the future, though in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be able to do so. My eyes stung, suddenly, and I felt the beginning of tears starting to come, tears that I did not want to cry and yet tears that I knew I would, because there was nothing else for me to do.

The squad room was suddenly where I wanted to be, a place where I could lose myself in the next case, the next suspect, the next interrogation. But I still had hours to go, hours of picking this apart until Nicole's taunting voice would become the only thing I heard. I longed for an escape, but refused to go to a bottle, seeking relief. My relief would come when Nicole was gone, and she had escaped again, and I knew I'd be seeing her sometime in the not-so-distant future. She had a habit of popping up when I least expected her.

I had never once before wanted to hit her, but her comments to Alex…They upset me more than anything else she'd ever done. I could see the hurt in my partner's eyes even now, at Nicole's vicious comments, and that violent feeling returned. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe and count to ten, knowing that if I didn't, I would do something I'd regret later on. Alex had always been better at handling Nicole than I was; there were no shadows in my partner's past for Nicole to pick at. No, I was the one she targeted, and it was I that she would always want, because she knew, knew how to get to me, knew how to get inside my mind the way I'd gotten into hers, and knew exactly what to say to give me the feelings of self-doubt that I was dealing with now.

The sound of someone knocking on the door startled me out of my reverie, and I looked over at the clock. One in the morning. Cursing silently, I got out of bed, wondering who on Earth would be calling upon me at this time of night. There was only one real reason I could think of, and debated momentarily as I walked into the entryway whether or not I should go and change, to spare whoever it was out in the hall the sight of me without a shirt on, but the knocking came again, and I decided not to. Whoever wanted to deal with me at this hour could deal with that as well.

When the door opened, light spilled in from the outer hallway, illuminating a figure hidden in a coat to shield them from the rain. And somehow I knew who it was, even without knowing. I waited, for something, anything, and soon found myself holding my partner as she hid her face in my chest and cried, something I knew she'd deny if I asked her about it in the morning, but at the moment, it didn't matter. I knew what her tears were for, just like I knew what my own had been for.

But that didn't matter, either. We stood there for what seemed like forever, before she finally allowed me to lead her into the kitchen, where she sat at the table as I went about making her a cup of tea, to give myself something to do, and to calm her down. She sat at the table, just watching me in silence, sniffling every now and then, and I wondered why she had come for a long moment as I stood, leaning back against the counter waiting for the tea kettle to whistle.

And then it hit me. I was not the only one Nicole's presence had this effect on, or rather, I wasn't anymore. She had hurt my partner, and that made her a lot worse than she already had been in my eyes. She had hurt me, but I was used to being hurt, and somehow, it didn't seem to effect me that badly, other than making me dwell on things that I'd have rather not dwelled on. But my partner's presence was really all I ever needed to bring me back, to keep me from falling too far to come back.

She had been my light in the darkness for the past four years of our partnership, and as I sat beside her, holding out her cup of tea, I knew that it was finally my turn to be hers.


End file.
